Freezer Paper Fun By Pat Sloan Have you been down the baggie aisle at the grocery store in search of freezer paper? Do you keep it hidden in your sewing room so your family won' use it? Have you ever wondered how quilters got started using freezer paper and what are the ways they use it? Freezer paper has one side that is shiny. When ironed to fabric, the shiny side will stick. It can be removed and re-ironed several times before it becomes too fuzzy to stick anymore. Freezer paper has a nice weight. You can see through it for tracing designs, and it comes eighteen inches wide on a large roll. I belong to an e-mail group called The Quilt History List. (For information on subscribing, visit http://www.QuiltHistory.com.) Lots of topics relating to quilt history are discussed on this site, and recently someone asked when freezer paper was first used for quilting. Hazel Carter, from Virginia, told us that her friend Anne Oliver might have been first to use freezer paper for quilting! This is the story Hazel told. "It began with sugar paper. Remember those little wrapped packages of loose sugar? One side of the paper was plastic. Anne used the plastic side of the paper to turn under her seam allowance for appliqué. The paper wasn't firm enough, so she and her husband looked for a heavier paper. The search continued until they heard about a wrapping paper used during deer hunting season. Reynolds® was the maker of this product, but it was only, at that time, available during deer hunting season. Today Reynolds® Freezer Paper is readily available in the grocery store, and quilting is even listed on the box as one of the uses for the product." "Anne began teaching freezer-paper appliqué in 1979. In 1981, an article by Anne on this technique was printed in the magazine Quilt. Anne's method involves placing the freezer paper (shiny side up) on the wrong side of the fabric, then using the tip of a hot iron to press the seam allowance to the plastic side of the freezer paper. The fabric adheres to the plastic and can then be appliquéd with more design accuracy. When Anne won awards with her Painted Metal Ceilings quilt (The Twentieth Century's Best American Quilts, p. 67), she described her "freezer paper design work." Articles about freezer paper techniques have been published in nearly thirty magazines." I started to wonder about other ways creative quilters use freezer paper. So I did some research and then turned to my Internet group and asked how they use it. The following list is what I learned about freezer paper use. For Appliqué 1. Use as an iron-on template that won't shift (on wool and cotton) I like to trace around the shape and then remove it. See photo A.